(Minghui.org)
Name: Tian YuchunChinese Name: 田玉春Gender: MaleAge: 74City: ChangchunProvince: JilinOccupation: UnknownDate of Death: July 24, 2024Date of Most Recent Arrest: April 18, 2024Most Recent Place of Detention: Changchun City First Detention Center
Mr. Tian Yuchun from Changchun City, Jilin Province died 21 days after he was released on bail in critical condition. The Chaoyang District Court threatened to sentence him to three years even after he passed away on July 24, 2024. He was one month shy of turning 75.
Mr. Tian was arrested at his home on April 18, 2024, by four officers from the Jinqianbao Police Station in Erdao District. They said they targeted him because their supervisors ordered them to fill a quota and arrest a certain number of Falun Gong practitioners by May 1st (China’s Labor Day).
Falun Gong has been persecuted in China since July 1999. The Chinese Communist Party is notorious for intensifying its persecution of practitioners around its “sensitive dates.”
The arresting officers confiscated Mr. Tian’s Falun Gong books and valuables. They promised to release him after they interrogated him, only to take him to the Changchun City First Detention Center the next day. During the required physical examination, Mr. Tian was found to have high blood pressure, stroke symptoms, and retina detachment. By law, he was unfit for detention, but the detention center still admitted him.
Mr. Tian’s family appealed to the detention center, to no avail. They then turned to the local association of people with disabilities, but they refused to help. The family hired a lawyer but the detention center said Mr. Tian was a “political inmate” and was not allowed any visitors (either family or lawyers).
The detention center even threatened to have the lawyer’s license revoked if he dared to keep representing Mr. Tian. On June 20, 2024, a guard notified Mr. Tian’s family that he vomited, lost consciousness that day and was diagnosed with an intestinal obstruction. His family asked to visit him but they were turned down. When the detention center found Mr. Tian also had bile duct cancer eight days later, they informed his family to apply for his bail release.
It took a few days to process all the required paperwork. By the time Mr. Tian was released on bail on July 3, 2024, he was so weak that he could not walk without assistance. He later told his family that he was held in Division Five at the detention center and was forced to sit on a board motionless every day. In less than one week, his bottom bled and developed a thick layer of calluses.
He also said his health decline started long before June 20 when the detention center called his family. He said he was taken to the detention center hospital in May 2024 and restrained in a bed with his hands cuffed and feet shackled all day long. The guards only allowed him to wear his underwear and a thin pair of pants. He was not given anything to eat. Three guards watched him and refused to say what injections he was given every day.
It was still chilly in Jilin in May. With his upper body naked, Mr. Tian implored the guards and the nurses to allow him to put on his shirt. They all ignored him.
Despite his condition, the detention center waited until June 20 to notify his family. He died 21 days after he was released.
Prior to this last persecution, Mr. Tian was previously arrested numerous times for practicing Falun Gong, which he credited for curing his heart disease and nephritis, and enabling him to quit smoking and drinking. He was given one year of forced labor after one of the arrests.
Mr. Tian was arrested on March 11, 2002 and held at the Changchun City Detention Center for 30 days before he was given one year of forced labor at the Chaoyanggou Labor Camp.
During his first seven days at the labor camp, Mr. Tian was forced to sit on a small stool motionless from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, with only three meal breaks. The slightest movement caused him to be beaten. He was also forced to recite the detention center rules. His buttocks festered because he sat for hours.
One week later, Mr. Tian was assigned to Team Four. As soon as he was brought there, a team captain and an inmate shoved his head in the space between the ladder rungs on a bunk bed. They next twisted his hands behind his back and flogged his buttocks with a wooden plank.
The only food he was given was cornbread and cabbage. Due to the poor living conditions, Mr. Tian developed scabies all over his body. The itching was unbearable and the blisters oozed pus and fluid.